A novel heuristic tool for selecting the best upgrading conditions for the removal of potentially toxic elements by soil washing.

Here, we propose two-parameter penalized attributive analysis, PPAA-U, a novel heuristic tool for selecting the best upgrading conditions (BUCs) for soil washing. Given a multi-component feed and a specific set of operating conditions, PPAA-U generates a quality index based on how well recoveries for key components are maximized while minimizing the yield. We demonstrate, through the calculation of families of curves, that this quality index is related linearly to recovery and to the inverse of the yield, meaning that reducing yield values is more important than maximizing recovery.